Reviews of notable new fiction and nonfiction. American Midnight, by Adam Hochschild (Mariner). The four years of American history from 1917 to 1921 are underexamined, but, in this account, they emerge as pivotal. “Just as the war in Europe was being fought on several fronts, so was the war at home,” Hochschild writes. Buy now on Amazon or Bookshop. Kiki Man Ray, by Mark Braude (Norton). One of the most popular artists’ models of the nineteen-twenties, Kiki de Montparnasse posed for artists including Soutine, Foujita, and, perhaps most fruitfully, the surrealist Man Ray. Braude’s biography argues that the pair’s long love affair was mutually galvanizing, and that Kiki was not just a muse but an artist in her own right. Buy now on Amazon or Bookshop. Haven, by Emma Donoghue (Little, Brown). In this novel of religious discovery, set in the seventh century, three Irish monks make a fraught journey from their monastery to Great Skellig, a craggy rock formation in the Atlantic that resembles “the most gigantic of cathedrals.” Buy now on Amazon or Bookshop. Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies, by Maddie Mortimer (Scribner). This striking novel takes a formally inventive approach to a woman’s terminal-cancer diagnosis. In Mortimer’s rendering, the cancer has its own voice and graphic style, and it guides readers through visceral life experiences. Buy now on Amazon or Bookshop. |
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